the place of Swedish in Finland.

[cors187]

History suggest a nation picks a language and forces everyone to learn it.
Just like what i am doing(forcing everyone around me to adapt or perish , or I perish) so far my English has improved since leaving my English speaking Homeland


When i look at history the swedes tried to do it to but not so successful.
Although me personally, coming from the other side of the world, the first thing i learned about nordic nations was ABBA.

[foca]

History suggest a nation picks a language and forces everyone to learn it.
Just like what i am doing(forcing everyone around me to adapt or perish , or I perish) so far my English has improved since leaving my English speaking Homeland

The question is how the majority does that language enforcement. One can enforce the majority language but one always should leave the private life out this. Private life,I believe , includes the right to be educated in the minority language.
As To nations choosing one language, well, there are nations who feel united as a nation and yet speaking a multitude of languages - jews for example..

[Noral]

So let us perform a little mental experiment . let us say that we follow you logic and apply it to 19 th century Finland . then Klingon equals Finnish , and most of the people ( just numerically) in the housing company speak another tongue...

Which other tongue do you mean?

[cors187]

History suggest a nation picks a language and forces everyone to learn it.
Just like what i am doing(forcing everyone around me to adapt or perish , or I perish) so far my English has improved since leaving my English speaking Homeland

The question is how the majority does that language enforcement. One can enforce the majority language but one always should leave the private life out this. Private life,I believe , includes the right to be educated in the minority language.
As To nations choosing one language, well, there are nations who feel united as a nation and yet speaking a multitude of languages - jews for example..

I think your right as a specialist approach.
In the early 90's i lived in a country where i could go into a store and if the store was operated by migrants, there was a good chance that i could not understand them.They were operating successful businesses and placing a non English speaking cashier.Most people at the time wondered where this immigration was heading.
Hi-rate immigration, startup grants, earning a potato a day as a wage was fueling this.Non of the locals could do what the immigrants were doing.

I grew up in a mixed salad bowl so i am pleased to say i am not a racist,but i can really ,really understand some stupid ideas and the consequences.

The question is how the majority does that language enforcement.

I cant fully answer that question.

[foca]

the problem of swedish( klingon) and Russian in Finland is not ( in case of Russian was not) the question of outright immigration. Finland was forcefully incorporated into the Swedish and then into The Russian empires. to some extent Swedish was the language of the "master" race for almost 600 years. But swedes were and to some extent still are a meaningful part of this community. they are born here and consider Finland their home. they are bilingual (apart from those who live on ålands), and thus unlike Balochi in London who thinks that everyone has to speak Balochi or Urdu , they will reply a Finnish speaking customer in perfect Finnish. the road to this situation in the Finnish society has been bumpy and far away from being straight... now there are Swedish schools and bilingual traditions , should they be abolished ? and for what reason?

[Noral]

the problem of swedish( klingon) and Russian in Finland is not ( in case of Russian was not) the question of outright immigration. Finland was forcefully incorporated into the Swedish and then into The Russian empires. to some extent Swedish was the language of the "master" race for almost 600 years. But swedes were and to some extent still are a meaningful part of this community. they are bor
n here and consider Finland their home. they are bilingual (apart from those who live on ålands), and thus unlike Balochi in London who thinks that everyone has to speak Balochi or Urdu

Which Balochi or Urdu-speaking immigrants make this sort of demand? With all due respect, this doesn't sound like how immigrants typically interact with the pre-existing populations of western countries.

I'm also still curious what you meant by this:

So let us perform a little mental experiment . let us say that we follow you logic and apply it to 19 th century Finland . then Klingon equals Finnish , and most of the people ( just numerically) in the housing company speak another tongue... ?

What non-Finnic language was ever the majority language in the area of present-day Finland?

[foca]

Which Balochi or Urdu-speaking immigrants make this sort of demand? With all due respect, this doesn't sound like how immigrants typically interact with the pre-existing populations of western countries.


What non-Finnic language was ever the majority language in the area of present-day Finland?

See above cors187's case....it seems that a cashier in a an English speaking country who us unable to speak English is asking everyone to learn Urdu, which is , by the way a language of a minority of population of Pakistan ( spoken as a mother tongue by only about 8 per cent of the population) and yet it along with English enjoys the status of the official language of the country .


Why should we limit ourselfs to present day Finland? in the 19 th century Finland was an area without history of a national state. The people at the helm of the empire at least for some period of time ( during Russification ) considered Finland a part of the empire and tried to apply generally accepted to them language approach to Finland. same as it was done in ,let us say , present day Tatarstan.

[Noral]

See above cors187's case....it seems that a cashier in a an English speaking country who us unable to speak English is asking everyone to learn Urdu,

OK. I still don't think this is a very common situation, though: if people are trying to run a business, they generally won't last very long if they expect/demand that their customers speak a minority language, unless there's a very strong concentration of people in their neighborhood who speak the same language.

Why should we limit ourselfs to present day Finland? in the 19 th century Finland was an area without history of a national state. The people at the helm of the empire at least for some period of time ( during Russification ) considered Finland a part of the empire and tried to apply generally accepted to them language approach to Finland. same as it was done in ,let us say , present day Tatarstan.

I'm not limiting us to present-day Finland. You implied (as far I can tell) that, in the early 19th century, in the region that is now Finland, another language than Finnish was spoken by the majority ("... and most of the people ( just numerically) in the housing company speak another tongue... "). I'm still not sure which language(s) you were referring to here.

[foca]

OK. I still don't think this is a very common situation, though: if people are trying to run a business, they generally won't last very long if they expect/demand that their customers speak a minority language, unless there's a very strong concentration of people in their neighborhood who speak the same language.


I'm not limiting us to present-day Finland. You implied (as far I can tell) that, in the early 19th century, in the region that is now Finland, another language than Finnish was spoken by the majority ("... and most of the people ( just numerically) in the housing company speak another tongue... "). I'm still not sure which language(s) you were referring to here.

neither me nor cor187 considered that situation common......

as for for "the housing company" i did imply the Russian empire of course. Finnic languages were widely spread from present day Finland to Uralic mountains. most territories around Moscow were to some extend ( sometimes to a great extend, I should say) populated by Finnic speaking people. Finnic languages sadly died out in the central Russia and mostly survived in more remote regions. thus the proposed mental experiment is about whether present day Finland should follow the imperial steps and push Swedish out of the country as most Finnic languages were pushed (absorbed, forgotten etc.) out of Russia? even though the situations are incomparable on many cultural and historical levels, it seems sometimes that some Finns who acknowledge wrongdoings of the Russification period are quite fine with repeating it towards Swedish speaking people...

[Noral]

as for for "the housing company" i did imply the Russian empire of course.

OK. You began that post by writing, "So let us perform a little mental experiment . let us say that we follow you logic and apply it to 19 th century Finland ", so I thought that the domain of your thought experiment was Finland (i.e., the territory covered by present-day Finland), not the Russian Empire.

Finnic languages were widely spread from present day Finland to Uralic mountains. most territories around Moscow were to some extend ( sometimes to a great extend, I should say) populated by Finnic speaking people. Finnic languages sadly died out in the central Russia and mostly survived in more remote regions. thus the proposed mental experiment is about whether present day Finland should follow the imperial steps and push Swedish out of the country as most Finnic languages were pushed (absorbed, forgotten etc.) out of Russia? even though the situations are incomparable on many cultural and historical levels, it seems sometimes that some Finns who acknowledge wrongdoings of the Russification period are quite fine with repeating it towards Swedish speaking people...

In that case, with all due respect, the analogy doesn't hold. No one on this thread (as far as I can tell) is proposing to expel Swedish-speakers from Finland, or to prevent them from speaking Swedish and establishing Swedish-language institutions to better serve their own population. The thread is about the relationship of the majority (Finnish-speaking) population in Finland to a minority *language* (Swedish) -- i.e., whether the majority should have a special obligation to invest time and resources into this language, but not any of the other minority languages spoken in Finland (Sami, Russian etc.), and regardless of whether such investment has any practical benefits.

[foca]

In that case, with all due respect, the analogy doesn't hold. No one on this thread (as far as I can tell) is proposing to expel Swedish-speakers from Finland, or to prevent them from speaking Swedish and establishing Swedish-language institutions to better serve their own population. The thread is about the relationship of the majority (Finnish-speaking) population in Finland to a minority *language* (Swedish) -- i.e., whether the majority should have a special obligation to invest time and resources into this language, but not any of the other minority languages spoken in Finland (Sami, Russian etc.), and regardless of whether such investment has any practical benefits.

I did not presume ( neither anyone else on the thread) that someone wants to expel Swedes as people. In my last post Swedish = language, not people, when I wrote about " pushing it out". No one physically "pushed" or destroyed Finnic speaking peoples in Russia , it is just over a period of 100-150 years they ceased to consider themselves as muroma or veps, they switched to Russian and forgot who their grandparents were...the proposed analogy is about this process not about physical removal of Swedish speaking people to Sweden. recently I have seen a number of articles in newspapers about mandatory Swedish in schools. I think if Swedish is out of the curriculum , the next thing might be gradual disappearance of it out daily life"......

as for certain people I referred to ( even though they are often hard to understand). I wonder if it should have been written in Swedish ?

Could you point me how it actually helps to know swedish instead, for example, french?
Also list where swedish is better than finnish, remember that we demolished hegemony of swedish hundred years ago, there was and is protests against finnish education because masterrace. I mean in cases of intellectual and cultural texts. How many relevant to anything texts are only in swedish and if there are then why?
Also tell me why "pan-nordic" is done in english instead of swedish? And i dont mean only fin-swe but also de-swe and no-swe etc. Have been there and done that, no one even tried to speak swedish. When i talk with swedes they dont even know that we "should know" swedish.

[Noral]

I did not presume ( neither anyone else on the thread) that someone wants to expel Swedes as people. In my last post Swedish = language, not people, when I wrote about " pushing it out". No one physically "pushed" or destroyed Finnic speaking peoples in Russia , it is just over a period of 100-150 years they ceased to consider themselves as muroma or veps, they switched to Russian and forgot who their grandparents were...the proposed analogy is about this process not about physical removal of Swedish speaking people to Sweden.

I think the survival of Swedish in modern-day Finland is quite secure compared to the minority Finnic languages in Russia, regardless of whether native Finnish speakers are obligated to learn and use Swedish or not.

For example, unlike Swedish in Finland, Muroma and Veps are/were spoken only in Russia -- neither is the majority language of a large, independent and modernized country that closely borders the territory where they're spoken in Russia.

as for certain people I referred to ( even though they are often hard to understand). I wonder if it should have been written in Swedish ?

I don't see anywhere in the quotation where Onko is advocating the disappearance of Swedish from Finland. He(?) mentions that Swedish speakers have not tried to speak Swedish with him, or with Danish or Norwegian speakers, but he says nothing about any decline of Swedish among the population that natively speaks it.

[Jukka Aho]

YLE reports that, when looking at the language demographics of Vantaa, there is now a greater number of those who speak Russian and Estonian as their first language than Swedish speakers:

• Vantaalla puhutaan jo enemmän venäjää ja viroa kuin ruotsia

[foca]

I think the survival of Swedish in modern-day Finland is quite secure compared to the minority Finnic languages in Russia, regardless of whether native Finnish speakers are obligated to learn and use Swedish or not.

if it was not the fight that the Sweden put up after 1917, they would most probably be speaking finnish now...Finland has quite a unique situation at the moment which will cone out of balance if Finnish majority will stop actively supporting Swedish (and that is advocated by many unfortunately).

I don't see anywhere in the quotation where Onko is advocating the disappearance of Swedish from Finland. He(?) mentions that Swedish speakers have not tried to speak Swedish with him, or with Danish or Norwegian speakers, but he says nothing about any decline of Swedish among the population that natively speaks it.

everyone sees what he/ she wants to see, obviously . But since the master race has been vanquished why should its language survive?
besides Swedish do speak Swedish do Danish and Norwegians and vice versa, most local dialects within these Scandinavian countries are mutually understandable. As for local swedes who do not speak Swedish to those who did not fulfill the national curriculum up to standard and never learned Swedish at school , I understand them completely. on my part I can tell you that when I talk Swedish to Swedish speaking people in Finland they always answer in Swedish not in English......

[Noral]

if it was not the fight that the Sweden put up after 1917, they would most probably be speaking finnish now...

I'm not sure what fight you're referring to, but why did the survival of Swedish in 20th-century Finland depend on it having the status of national language (as opposed to a regional/minority language) in Finland?

Finland has quite a unique situation at the moment which will cone out of balance if Finnish majority will stop actively supporting Swedish

Again, with all due respect, I'm waiting for any evidence that this is the case. (The article that Jukka Aho just linked to is about changes in population demographics, as far as I can tell, not about Swedish speakers giving up their language.)

everyone sees what he/ she wants to see, obviously . But since the master race has been vanquished why should its language survive?

Swedish speakers in Finland haven't been vanquished. Their language is still spoken by 5% of the population who are free to keep their native language alive to the extent that they want to, and I don't see where Onko argued anything different.